Team Members and Role:

Abstract:

The Mass Mileage team at UMass Amherst, which competes in the Shell Eco-Marathon for high fuel efficiency, has long struggled without a proper means of powertrain testing, resulting in back-to-back failures to perform during competition. To address this, Team 1504 team designed and fabricated a cost-effective, durable chassis dynamometer tailored to their needs. Unlike commercial systems that are prohibitively expensive or overengineered, the solution uses a hydraulic load system that enables variable resistance across RPM ranges, with power measurements calculated from pressure and RPM sensors via a Programmable Logic Controller(PLC) and then displayed via a Human Machine Interface(HMI). Existing solutions have not met this need due to cost, complexity, or a mismatch in scale. This approach offers the Mass Mileage team a repeatable and precise testing platform that supports their mission to tune for maximum efficiency and finally compete at the level of their global peers.